Chapter 122: Book 2: Chapter 23

I hope everyone has a Merry Xmas. No chapter next week I'll be too busy with the festive period. Torin will be back on New Year's Eve.

Chapter 23

Day 56

 

Two days after the difficulties at Holland we returned to the small coastal town of Ludington to see what we could get our hands on. Although most of the militia warriors who’d gone raiding with me earlier in the week had regained their hit points and lost health, I decided to change things up and bring mostly non-inmates on this expedition.

Ludington was effectively a monster-town and wouldn’t negatively impact their sensibilities. Also, many of the non-inmate militia members were from Ionia or the surrounding towns. They had recently lost friends or colleagues in Freeport and were looking for some payback against the Fomorian menace.

Anything that distracted them from my technical culpability in Freeport’s demise was most welcome.

This would be the last mission before Marena’s Mercy upgraded into a mark two vessel. The Lion’s Claw prisoners that we fed to the dungeon over the last couple of days had taken her past the required threshold to upgrade.

The process of upgrading meant the ship would need to remain in port as it went through the transition.

It would also take most of the day.

A day wasn’t so bad but the transition for each subsequent mark would take progressively longer than the one before. Creating a mark one ship had only taken a few hours. By the time you get to upgrading to mark seven or eight, it would take over a week to complete the conversion.

However, unlike when I converted the water taxi, Anastasia’s avatar could remain by my side. She would also be able to interrupt the process and make the ship seaworthy again in only a few minutes if it became necessary. We would forfeit some of the energy already used as part of the transition if she did, but not as much as you might think.

Nonetheless, Anastasia and the ship had been busy during the two days that most of my forces were in recovery mode. She had sailed Susan out to Gull Island and retrieved the podium from there.

With the podium back I could complete the first Pillars of the Community quest but decided to hold off on doing so immediately. Even with the recent influx of indentured citizens from China, we didn’t have the numbers to properly establish a second settlement. Especially one that had no existing infrastructure or shielding.

And as I was now level ten, once the podium had been secured, it was time to run another dungeon and gather some more upgrade points.

I’d already visited all the level-one dungeons in the archipelago. By moving on to the level two and three dungeons I could bring Shana and Fang Mei in with me and remain within the adjusted level cap, provided it was a second-tier dungeon. I would have to solo-run the handful of low-level tier-one dungeons before I out-levelled their maximum entry criteria. Then send the ladies in together afterwards.

This was an unusual situation that came about because Earth was new to the Framework and because of the steps Dean took that increased dungeon density. That meant we had a lot of baby dungeons that were very low in level.

Of course, over time, these dungeons would gradually increase in level and therefore difficulty. However, this did not mean that all dungeons eventually grew so strong that there was nowhere for the freshly come of age level-ones to delve.

Wild dungeons could randomly and spontaneously regress back to an earlier stage in their development. Apparently, there was no way to predict when or if this would occur, but it would happen often enough that our descendants wouldn’t be frozen out.

The good news, as a tamed dungeon, this regression would not happen to Marena’s Mercy unless she became Captain-less and reverted to an unbound and wild status.

During the delving yesterday, Fang Mei had been under orders not to expose herself to danger in the dungeon. She had still been affected by the last vestiges of her warp sickness when we went in. Mostly because she’d had the ability active almost constantly for several weeks, so it took longer than usual to clear. Today, though, she was debuff free, and it would be her first chance to show me what she could do.

From afar we could see the conflict between the fomorians, and the forest goblins had concluded in the fishmen’s favour. The sensors in the navigation cabin revealed that the bay surrounding the town was filled with the sea-dwellers, a little more than a hundred, and we could see some on the land ordering the surviving goblins around.

Before we sailed in, I spent a few minutes observing the goings on in the town itself using my spyglass that had reshaped itself into a pair of binoculars for ease of use.

The goblins had been collared and seemed to be engaged in construction work. Many of the Ludington buildings had been knocked down to provide material and they were now building their own structures under the watchful eyes of a handful of fomorian guards.

I had a couple of questions so turned to my font of information. My imp.

“Quixbix, where did the fomorians get the collars? I thought spawned monsters couldn’t use podiums?”

<They can’t. Except to try and remove them, which as we covered last month they only do in certain circumstances or if they are being directed by another much more powerful entity. Societal mobs can create them from their spawning crystals. They rarely use them on people, though. People can continuously fight the collar’s influence and mobs exert less authority over them than characters. It’s easier for the mobs to just kill them. Usually more beneficial for the mob too.>

“Thanks for that cheery bit of unasked-for extra information,” I joked drily.

The mental equivalent of a shoulder shrug was the only answer I received.

“What’s with all the construction? What are they building?”

<Goblins make good workhorses, and they are competent builders. For mobs. Provided they are properly supervised, and you don’t expect anything particularly sophisticated. You can get a decent wall and basic buildings out of them fairly quickly that won’t fall or be easily breached. Most of the time.

<Left to their own devices gobbo’s are lazy runts that will do a slapdash job unless being compelled by a collar or fear of a bigger, meaner goblin. Most of the villages they build for themselves are shoddy as hell and prone to collapse. But they are weak, prone to surrender, and a little bit useful, so they end up being enslaved by stronger mobs frequently. There are some canny tribes out there that do a brisk business trading captured goblins to receptive markets.>

“What the hell, Quixbix? I thought the mob’s behaviour was scripted. That they were basically mana manifestations of computer programs.”

<They are. But with time, and I’m talking several decades minimum, those that survive begin to develop more personality and individualistic traits. They can go off-script, so to speak, if they sense an opportunity. It’s still a very risky endeavour. They are still mobs, after all, and usually, it will only be the upper echelons of a tribe that have developed any kind of resistance to their true scripted nature. The rank and file could easily revert to their usual behavioural patterns if they aren’t sufficiently cowed by their boss mobs.>

“So, with Earth being freshly integrated we won’t meet any boss mobs like that will we.”

<Nothing that was spawned here will be like that. Of course, there could be a few transplants from elsewhere that might make things interesting.>

My imp and I had different definitions of interesting.

“Okay, but what the hell does a clan of sea-dwellers need to build on land?”

<Bathhouses? I don’t know, Torin. Lodgings for the goblins. Shrines to Sholmdir or something like that. The sea-god’s clammy fingerprints are likely all over this.>

From what I could see through my binoculars there were a couple of buildings that could be the start of a shrine or temple. But the majority of the half-built structures seemed more akin to warehouses. And I doubted they were intended for the forest goblins.

Regardless, the conversation did reveal that maybe stuffing any captured goblin straight into the dungeon might not be the best use for them. A disposable workforce that we could use to build walls and basic housing for new settlements would come in handy. We wouldn’t even need to feed them proper food. The flavourless slop we could make in the slave market would provide any sustenance they required.

I’d seen all that I needed to and headed back into the navigation cabin.

“Ana, take us in. Full steam ahead.”

With the bay full of fomorians, speed would be necessary. I wanted to be able to deposit a sizable force on land before the submerged threat had a chance to join the fray or attack the ship. We needed to secure those greenskin assets.

The ship ploughed through the tranquil water at a rapid rate of knots, past the bay walls that hadn’t been blocked by the monsters. A serious oversight on their part. As the ship passed through, the fomorians began to react and swim towards us swiftly. But they couldn’t swim as fast as we were currently sailing with a bit of energy impetus from Ana.

Ludington had a ferry service that ran to Manitowoc in Wisconsin. One of the ferries had been docked in port at the time the Framework came online. The ferry was almost one hundred metres long and its back end, the stern, abutted the road to the dock, allowing vehicles to drive on. The length of the ferry ran parallel to the dock and the front half of the ship had a gap of about ten metres between the dockside and the starboard side of the ferry. This gap gradually narrowed the closer you got to the stern and the loading area of the ferry.

A gap that was large enough for a mark one vessel to exploit.

Anastasia guided us in as she slowed Marena’s Mercy unnaturally fast and gently wedged the ship into the gap. Although this did effectively trap us, the level of risk was small. Marena’s Mercy was a dungeon ship and Ana could move her backwards if necessary. Meanwhile, the ferry would protect our flank and funnel the fomorians to the stern of our ship or onto the land.

A widened gangplank extended and cracked down onto the concrete slabs where passengers would normally queue to board the ferry. Jackson led most of the regular crew as the vanguard of the attack onto land. He ran down the gangplank while the more agile vaulted over the side. It wasn’t too great a drop.

You are reading story Corsairs & Cataclysms at novel35.com

The militia forces followed after. Their job was to secure the dock area around the ship and protect the crew’s rear as they assaulted the enemies within the town limits.

LT and Shana commanded a second smaller force that used the malleable masts, that Anastasia leaned towards the ferry, to clamber up and over onto the immobilised metal ship. They would deal with anything that might already be lurking on the ferry or got the clever idea of climbing onboard so they could drop down on us from above. It would also give Shana an excellent vantage point to provide ranged support to the main attack force.

That left me, Ana, Fang Mei, and a few other crew members to defend the stern of our ship from the angry fomorians.

The fishy assholes didn’t make us wait long.

“They are so disgusting,” Anastasia bitched as they swam into the same gap in a large shoal and collided with the back of the ship in a frothing rage.

We could hear their gurgled battle cries as they thrashed and clawed at the ship’s hull, hauling themselves up. There was not enough room for all of them to clamber up, so the excess began to spill over and crawled onto the dockside where they were met by three squads of my militia, freshly debarked from Marena’s Mercy.

Jackson’s friends from Ionia, Carlos, D-Ball, and Tommy were in one of the squads that intercepted the overflow. They had wanted to join the crew but there hadn’t been sufficient openings to accommodate them, so they had to settle for positions in the militia.

Besides, I wanted to get an idea of their combat potential first. I didn’t want to draw in any of Jackson’s buddies if I thought they were going to get themselves killed. The ship’s official crew would always be taking the greatest risks, which is why they got the greater rewards.

We could have gone to the rear rail of the aft-castle poop deck and used polearms to try and knock the fomorians off or away but that might discourage them from trying to take the ship and make a further nuisance of themselves in the town. That was not part of the plan, so we held back and waited for them to make it onboard.

Plus, we had recently figured out that anything killed on the ship could then be looted and absorbed by it. Marena’s Mercy would even gain a little energy from doing so. Not nearly as much as she would get if the mob or person died inside the dungeon itself, but why turn down free nibbles when they offered themselves so conveniently.

The first five or six fomorians slithered over the railing and hawked up some filth from the back of their throats and gobbed it on the deck. I didn’t need to look at Anastasia to feel her seething fury at their vile conduct.

There was a slight difference in the appearance of these fomorians from those we had encountered on Beaver Island. They still had the pasty, white, rubbery skin and the dead fisheyes, but this group had a dirty-red, frilled fin about two inches high that ran from between their dead black eyes, over their head and down their necks.

 

  Fomorians x 112

Grade: R

Level: 3 (average)

HP: 350

Loot Value: Low

Threat: Moderate

XP Value: 2,080 XP each (average)

Mob Description: Fomorians are a kind of sea demon, but not limited to saltwater. They have a mana-based ability which allows them to leave water for a period of up to 24 hours. When they return to the water the ability can’t be used again for 2 + the number of hours out of the water. If they leave the water without activating the ability they will begin to suffocate, incurring Hit Point damage.

 

A quick analysis revealed this clan were a small step up in quality and danger from the lesser fomorian clan on the doorstep of Stormblade Harbour. Hence the red frilly fin on their heads to differentiate them. But they remained well within our capability to handle.

The fomorians shook their fishbone spears and charged at us. Their webbed feet slapped on the deck wetly and then battle was met.

I fended off spear thrusts with my longer blades, flicking forth the occasional riposte, slicing limbs.

Meanwhile, Fang Mei used her smaller stature to duck and dive around the fomorians whose focus was upon me and the other bigger, well-armoured, dangerous-looking crew members.

Her pair of chaos daggers jabbed at her victims quick as a flash. Stabbing kidneys and slashing hamstrings before she darted back to safety behind us only to shuffle over to the next gap and do the same again to a new target. The fomorians she didn’t kill outright were severely hampered and became easy pickings for our frontline.

Anastasia’s typical wild abandon in battle was somewhat subdued, but she was no less deadly with her whip. She was standing on the rail behind us to give her some added height and the Drainer’s Whip would crack fiercely above our heads and savagely rend a sea-demon. The whip’s extended range was more than enough to clear our heads and attack the fomorians coming over the stern taffrail.

She barely bothered to keep the whip coiled on them long enough to extract many of their hit points. Preferring to use the whip to flay the pasty, scaly skin from their bodies. She really didn’t like them, and I couldn’t blame her for the prejudice. I found them equally abhorrent.

The fighting lasted for less than ten minutes when Quixbix flashed me the notification that the few remaining fomorians in this group had failed a morale check and were already fleeing the waters around Ludington

Our biggest difficulty during the fight had been the growing pile of stinking corpses getting in our way. However, it turned out that being in combat didn’t prevent Anastasia from using the ship to loot and absorb the bodies which cleared up that nagging problem and let us continue with the killing unimpeded.

“All clear up here, Captain,” LT called down to me from the ferry.

I waved my scimitar back at him in acknowledgement.

The fighting on the docks had ceased as well and the few casualties among the militia were being tended to. I didn’t see any fatalities which was good.

The sound of fighting further into the town carried back to us on the wind so the day was not entirely done.

I used the Clarions Call to contact the vanguard group.

Jackson, the fomorians have been routed from the ship and the docks. Send up a single ball of your green flame if all is good at your end. Two if you need us to send in backup. Be honest, that is an order.

A few seconds later, a single puff of green flame burst in the air from the centre of Ludington. Things would be simpler when I managed to enhance the Clarion’s Call for two-way communication.

“Ana, is there anything lurking nearby beneath the waterline?”

The diminutive blonde’s eyes glazed over for a moment as she accessed the charts in the navigation cabin. When her eyes refocused, she shook her head in the negative.

“Great. Everything seems to be in hand. Let’s head down and start the salvage operation,” I announced to Ana and Fang Mei. “The rest of you stay aboard and keep your eyes open, just in case,” I said to the other crew members that had stayed with us.

This included Charlie. He’d obviously been a bit reluctant to be part of my group as everyone knew we’d likely be taking the brunt of the fomorian spears, but I’d not given him a choice in the matter. Captain’s privilege and all.

Any hope that the sea-demons might solve the problem of an unreliable scammer in my ranks evaporated within the first minute. Our unit had been too efficient at taking them down and he was never in any genuine danger.

Never mind, there would be other raids. If at first, you don’t succeed. Try, try again. Eventually, either my problem would be solved, or Charlie would become a legitimate badass who didn’t need to con his way into a woman’s bed by pretending to be me.

Win-win as they say.

Shana launched herself from the top of the ferry, landing adroitly in the crow’s nest and shimmed her way down the mast before alighting onto the deck and joining us. She moved in for a quick sloppy kiss which delayed us just long enough for LT to make his way down the mast at a more sedate pace than the lithe elf woman.

With everyone assembled we were ready to inspect the results of the bloody work in Ludington.

You can find story with these keywords: Corsairs & Cataclysms, Read Corsairs & Cataclysms, Corsairs & Cataclysms novel, Corsairs & Cataclysms book, Corsairs & Cataclysms story, Corsairs & Cataclysms full, Corsairs & Cataclysms Latest Chapter